Mad As Hell

Great point. When it comes down to expressing and directing my rage, I need to keep in mind the 236 dog-ass Republicans who voted for the Big Bamboozle Bill in the first place.

So I'm pretty pissed, and I'm going to let the Dems have it - I'm just not going to reserve my disgust exclusively for "my own side".

And here they are - in twiXter format:

@SenAngusKing 

@timkaine 

@SenCortezMasto 

@SenFettermanPA 

@SenatorShaheen 

@SenatorDurbin 

@SenatorHassan 

Capitol Switchboard

202-224-3121

Give 'em hell

Overheard

If a genie appeared and told Democrats they'd been granted three wishes, they'd negotiate it down to one wish, and then ask for something they think Republicans might like.

Holy Crap

Democrats sweep all 30 House of Delegates seats in Northern Virginia, flip 13 seats statewide

Democratic candidates won all 30 of Northern Virginia's seats in the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday as the party was set to significantly expand its 51-49 majority in the state's lower chamber.

As of 11 p.m., Democrats had picked up 13 seats statewide, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. With only one race undecided, the Democrats will hold at least 64 of the 100 seats, the most they have held in nearly 40 years.

Two of the pickups were in Northern Virginia, including in western Prince William's 21st District, where former Del. Elizabeth Guzman ousted first-term incumbent Ian Lovejoy.

And in the 30th District -- western Loudoun County and northern Fauquier County -- Democrat John McAuliff defeated Republican incumbent Geary Higgins by about 600 votes, or 1.5 percentage points.

After years of Republican control, Democrats took the majority in the House of Delegates in 2019 only to lose it in 2021, when Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor. However, the party won control back in 2023, following redistricting in late 2021.

“Tonight, Virginians sent a clear message across the nation: Donald Trump and Virginia Republicans’ politics of chaos and cruelty have no home in the Commonwealth,” House Speaker Don Scott of Portsmouth said in a statement. “House Democrats expanded our majority because we stood up for Virginians and built a vision that puts people first — lowering costs, growing our economy and protecting our rights."

In districts that include parts of Prince William County, results Tuesday were as follows.

19th District (northeastern Prince William and southeastern Fairfax County)

Democrat Rozia Henson, a Woodbridge native, was reelected to a second term without opposition. Henson is the first openly gay Black man to serve in the House.

20th District (Manassas area)

Democrat Michelle Maldonado was elected to a third term in the House with 67.8% of the vote. The name of Republican Christopher Stone appeared on the ballot, but Stone withdrew last month.

21st District (western Prince William, including Haymarket)

In a race that was considered to be tight, Democrat Josh Thomas easily won a second term over Republican challenger Gregory Lee Gorham by more than 5,000 votes, or nearly 17 percentage points.

22nd District (western Prince William, including Bristow and Brentsville)

In one of the most closely watched and most expensive races in the state, Lovejoy didn't survive a challenge from Guzman. The Democrat, returning to the House of Delegates after previously serving two terms, won 54.6% of the vote to Lovejoy's 45.3%, a margin of 3,400 votes.

23rd District (southeastern Prince William and northern Stafford County)

Democrat Candi King was elected to her third full term in the House. She was first elected in a special election in January 2021 to fill the seat vacated by Jennifer Carroll Foy, who resigned to run for governor that year, and then was elected to her first full term that fall.

King defeated Republican James Tully with 76.5% of the vote.

24th District (southern Prince William, including Montclair and portions of Dale City)

Powerful Democratic Del. Luke Torian, who has served in the House since 2010, did not have a challenger. Torian chairs the House Appropriations Committee, which determines how the state spends its tax dollars.

25th District (north central Prince William, including Lake Ridge and the County Center area)

Democrat Briana Sewell was unopposed for a third term.

Today's Belle

She's not usually as bold as this.

Red To Blue

A Random Selection

Off_JaWaggon

Today's Moment Of Shame

There are plenty of times when congress critters like to do things just because it'll embarrass the president.

This is kinda like that, except for the part about a president who likes to fuck girls who haven't come of age - a president who likely broke the law and did pretty much exactly what he's spent the last 10 years accusing his opponents of doing.

Hard to say how MAGA is going to react to their guys in congress moving officially to block the release when half of them have benefited from this horseshit for years too.

Daddy State Awareness Guide, Rule 1:

Every accusation is a confession.

The Big Butt-Ugly Bamboozle

Democrats usually come with pretty decent policies that are aimed at helping us solve real world problems.

Republicans almost always come with deceptions aimed at keeping us from seeing that we're about to get royally fucked. Again.

C'mon, Dems

Yes, dammit - this guy

Hey, Dems - that sound you hear is opportunity knocking rather loudly on your fucking door.

Tim Walz to launch national tour of town halls in Republican House districts

Tim Walz is headed back out on the road – this time, for a tour of House districts represented by Republicans who have stopped holding in-person town halls amid the raucous receptions some of their colleagues have gotten across the country.

The Minnesota governor and 2024 vice presidential candidate will start on Friday in Iowa, in the district represented by Rep. Zach Nunn, then head across the border to Nebraska, for the district represented by Rep. Don Bacon – both of whom won tight races for re-election last year. Walz’s team is already planning stops in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ohio for the coming weeks, with more stops expected to be added.

Given his national profile after his time on the Democratic ticket last year, Walz said he felt obligated to step up.

“There was just a primal scream of folks recognizing what’s going on with the Trump administration, their authoritarian tendencies, and what they viewed was a lack of a proper response from their representatives,” he told CNN on Wednesday. “It was about these Republican representatives recognizing this stuff’s really unpopular, so they’re going to quit the town halls. These folks need to be heard. They need to be heard, and to be candid with you, Democratic leadership needs to hear them.”

Walz’s plans started with a post last week on X, responding to House Republican leaders who advised their colleagues to stop holding town halls. Republicans have accused those town halls of being packed with paid activists – though those making such accusations haven’t provided any evidence or explanations of why Democratic members’ town halls have also been packed.

Walz said he’d been overwhelmed by the response to that tweet, and his staff has been sifting through what an aide told CNN was hundreds of invitations from local party leaders and candidates asking him to come. He said he found that response reassuring after he and Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump and JD Vance.

“I always feared that they would become apathetic after this last election and just check out, but they are not doing that,” Walz said.

Other than independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has taken two swings of his own through the Midwest in the past month, no major Democratic leaders have been stepping forward with similar kinds of public events. Walz chalked that up in part to his party “trying to find our feet,” but the situation clearly frustrates him.

“I’m going to tell them that it doesn’t have to be this way,” he said, referencing the Trump administration’s moves to dismantle the Department of Education as a prime example. “I’m going to say ways that they can mobilize to fight back, ways that I think are the most effective ways. And I fully expect them to tell me ways that they’re looking for.”

As the Tea Party rose through a different set of town hall protests in the 2010 election cycle, Walz was a congressman in a tight district running for a third term. He won, but that experience was a rough one, he said, and he warned Republicans now to ignore what’s happening at their own peril.

“I’m a catalyst to provide them a megaphone to lift up their voice. And I think that’s what people are looking for,” he said. “I understand now my responsibility. I have a little more of a national voice, so I should bring it to them, and I’m going to basically be handing the megaphone to them.”

But he said when Democrats are “just being a foil to Trump, we are not crossing into that space we need to, to have them believe us, to know what we stand for.”

After going deliberately quiet in the months after the campaign – following a largely low-profile role as running mate that sources say was designed by the Harris campaign leadership – Walz has been stepping out more in recent weeks.

Many expect Walz to run for a third term as governor next year, and he downplayed the suggestion that this effort was laying the groundwork for a future national run.

“I will do anything possible to make sure that we win in ‘28. I do not need to be on that ticket,” he told CNN. “That’s not my pursuit here. My pursuit is that I am still in a position where I have a platform and I have some power to make a difference, and if 20 people show up that’s good by me because those 20 people are making a difference. This isn’t about drawing a crowd. I’ll go to states where it wouldn’t matter, but it matters to those people. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

Today's Keith

Lincoln had to fire 3 commanding generals before he settled on US Grant.

Grant was a blood-n-guts leader, criticized - and by some, condemned - because he waded into the war and kept pushing until the other side gave up.

It was ugly and brutal, and it left some scars and festering wounds we're still a bit reluctant to tend to.

But he did it all because, unlike his predecessors, he recognized it for being the brick fight it was.

So he didn't try to pretend he could get the job done by bowing politely and asking Uncle Bob's permission to proceed.

He threw bricks.

And he kept throwing bricks until the Confederacy couldn't fight anymore and had to quit.

Overheard

Referring to Trump, Biden and the Democrat have always said:

He's a con artist

Worst spray tan ever

Orangey and small hands

Erratic

Vulgar

Fake

I'm a never Trump guy

Never liked him

Terrible candidate

Only idiots are going to vote for him

He could be America's Hitler

Oh - wait - that wasn't Democrats, that was Marco Rubio and JD Vance.

Blame

Today's Tom

The gurus and pundits spend all their time taking a dump on Democrats for not messaging better, or carping about the propaganda coming from "the right", or about the Press Poodles who can't figure out that they have to stand for something other than selling ads.

What they refuse to acknowlege is just how fuckin' stupidly Americans act sometimes. You can't teach people who don't want to learn.

You'll never change a mind

Unopened

But you can slip a mad man

Water

From the well he's poisoned.

-- Grant Peeples

• I don't care about big government vs small government - I want good government.
• I don't care about Red vs Blue - I want honor and integrity.
• I don't care about Who's Up vs Who's Down - I want good-faith conversations, and problem solving - without the ulterior motives - and especially without all this fucked up intrigue at the palace, aimed at tearing down my democracy.

☟ These guys got it right ☟

Playing Nice

Democrats shouldn’t try to find ‘common ground’ with Trump

Unwise, premature and embarrassing outreach from what is supposed to be the opposition.

A depressingly high number of elected Democrats are declaring their intent to find “common ground” with President-elect Donald Trump and his crackpot Cabinet picks. Their naive, tone-deaf declarations epitomize an infatuation with bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake. Sometimes, it’s better not to bend the knee before the bidding even gets underway.

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Democrats strain credulity if they imagine they can find common ground with someone who vows, among other mind-boggling schemes, to imprison opponents, deploy the military against immigrants, snatch the power of the purse from Congress and pay for tax cuts for billionaires with cuts to entitlements and other programs that serve ordinary Americans. (What would common ground even look like? Deport just 5.5 million people, not 11 million? Cut Social Security only a little bit?)

The fruitless search for nonexistent common ground instantaneously normalizes Trump. Democrats should not propound the dubious assertion that Trump can operate rationally and in good faith. Mouthing this platitude makes Democrats look weak, foolish and unprepared to stand up to an authoritarian agenda.

Moreover, what is the point of declaring their “common ground” aspirations now? Similar aspirational statements were made before MAGA Republicans reneged on the budget deal (later giving up the effort to suspend the debt ceiling when Democrats stood their ground). That should be a wake-up call: There is no bargaining with people who break deals. Democrats must not be in the position of chasing after Republicans. They will find themselves negotiating against themselves to reach the mythical “common ground.”

Moreover, why isn’t the onus on Trump — as it consistently was on President Joe Biden — to “unify” the country? Trump has shown no inclination to moderate. (Certainly not by choosing Kash Patel for the FBI or Putin mouthpiece Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence.)

There might be times when Trump accidentally stumbles into positions Democrats previously held. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And when Trump by happenstance betrays his base or reverses a ridiculous position, Democrats should know when to say yes. (Consider the times Biden ate then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s lunch in negotiations.) But looking for common ground assumes Trump has an end goal that falls within the realm of normal, acceptable democratic policies. Let him prove his bona fides first.

And there will be times, as I’ve described, when Democrats are forced to swallow a legislative poison pill: voting to pass a vital bill even if Republicans slip cruel and unacceptable measures into it. Making practical, hard concessions to preserve long-term political viability is not finding common ground. To the contrary, it’s an opportunity to point out how Republicans resort to legislative blackmail to enact unpopular policies.

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times recently admonished Democrats to be not simply the minority party but the opposition party:

An opposition would use every opportunity it had to demonstrate its resolute stance against the incoming administration. It would do everything in its power to try to seize the public’s attention and make hay of the president-elect’s efforts to put lawlessness at the center of American government. An opposition would highlight the extent to which Donald Trump has no intention of fulfilling his pledge of lower prices and greater economic prosperity for ordinary people and is openly scheming with the billionaire oligarchs who paid for and ran his campaign to gut the social safety net and bring something like Hooverism back from the ash heap of history.

And frankly, if Democrats think democracy is in peril, their leaders should act like it. (“Either democracy was on the ballot in November or it wasn’t,” wrote Bouie. “And if it was, it makes no political, ethical or strategic sense to act as if we live in normal times.”)

Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) understood the role of an opposition party when he vowed to make Barack Obama a one-term president. (McConnell managed to pick up six Senate seats in 2010, as well as a net six governorships and 63 House seats to win back the majority.)

What do I expect Democrats to say? How about this: The nominees and proposals advanced by the president-elect should frighten every American. They will hurt ordinary, hard-working Americans. It’s our job to protect the rights and interests of our constituents. I will do whatever I can to block crackpot nominees and schemes. (If they cannot manage to say something along those lines, then better to say nothing. Democrats should learn when silence is preferable to prostrating themselves before Trump.)

If Democrats eschew “common ground” gibberish, they might get credit when they manage to quash Trump’s nuttiest initiatives. There’s no point in setting up Trump to refashion humiliating defeats as magnanimous acts of compromise when he cannot get his way. Forcing Trump to back down, rather than striving for some mythical middle, would be a good way to rally the party for 2026.

Trump falsely claims he has some overwhelming mandate to accomplish a host of rash, antidemocratic moves. As I (along with many others) have written, he does not. He barely won, in part because many of his voters thought he would not do the radical things he promised. But Democrats do have a mandate: to stop him when they can. Instead of “find common ground,” maybe they should strive to “give no quarter.”

Today's Vic

Lauren Boebert may be headed for a crash. Charlie Cook has moved this race from Likely Red to Leans Red.

The Problem Of Late Deciders

I think most "undecideds" are rationalizing the fact that they don't pay attention, or they just follow the crowd, or they go with whatever sign they see last before they vote ... or they're straight up lying for whatever reason.

Conventional wisdom says there are actual honest-to-god people who wait forever to make a decision.

Two basic kinds of undecided voters, and they can be persuaded.

• I'm definitely gonna vote, but I'm not sure I'll vote for you
• I'm not sure I'm gonna vote, but if I do, I'll definitely vote for you

I've said it before - this can't be considered just another election where it doesn't really matter who we put in charge. It does matter. A lot.

In another demonstration of CNN's toxic neutrality, Tapper lets Johnson lie his ass off, and he never once questions the guy's evasions and word safaris and recitation of GOP ad copy.

And more - Mike Johnson is a believer in The Second Coming - something Christians have been predicting for 2000 years. Why the fuck would anybody put any stock in his predictions for an election?

Turned Another'n

Fed up with MAGA bullshit, a former FL GOP Chair goes public for Harris.

Former Florida GOP chair backs Harris after Helene ‘trolling’

The former head of the Florida Republican Party said he’s supporting Vice President Harris after “trolling” from other Republicans over the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.

Al Cárdenas said in his appearance Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that natural disasters have “always been a bipartisan issue.”

“Both Democrats and Republicans have worked together to assist the people in harm’s way,” Cárdenas added. “Well, you know, the White House asked Congress to pass a bill to — a supplemental bill — to really help people with these disasters, because we may be running outta cash. All of a sudden, the trolling, the Trump operatives and everybody else started saying, ‘Well, they’re giving that money to illegal immigrants.’ Not true.”

Republicans, including former President Trump have gone after the federal response to Hurricane Helene. Last week, at a rally in Saginaw, Mich., the former president said the response “is going even worse” than Hurricane Katrina.

“A certain president, I will not name him, destroyed his reputation with Katrina,” Trump said of former President George W. Bush. “And this is going even worse. She’s doing even worse than he did.”

Cárdenas said in his appearance on “Morning Joe” that he believes “Harris and [Tim] Walz may not necessarily be my ideal ticket, but they’re not gonna put America in harm’s way.”

“And so I made an easy decision for me,” the former Sunshine State GOP head said.

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It’s not surprising that Cárdenas would back Harris as he has been a critic of Trump in the past, once saying in a post on the social platform X back in 2018 that the president is “a despicable divider; the worse social poison to afflict our country in decades” in response to a campaign ad from Trump on immigration.

“This ad, and your full approval of it, will condemn you and your bigoted legacy forever in the annals of America’s history books,” Cárdenas continued in the post.

The Hill has reached out to the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign.

Today's Belle

Republicans keep nominating assholes who don't give one empty fuck about the people they purport to represent.

Let them talk in a venue they apparently think of as a safe space, and they show their ass every time.

DEMOCRATS KNOW

THEY'RE CALLED TO SERVE

REPUBLICANS BELIEVE

THEY'RE ENTITLED TO RULE

Fact Check

It's always hard to compare performances, but there are ways to weight and un-weight the stats to get a pretty fair analysis

This comparison seems to lean pretty hard towards the conclusion that Democrats are better at handling the economy.

About The Unity Theme

I get it, Democrats. I get it, Republicans. I get it, Libertarians and Independents and Greenies and Progressives and all y'all.

Honest - I fuckin' get it. We have to be able to look past our differences and figure out how to make common cause.

And I want to do that, and I swear to fake Jesus I've been trying. 

I even have "faith" that we'll get back there, and I'm holding out hope we can all kiss and make up before I'm dead and gone.

But let me echo some of what came thru over the last few days at the DNC Convention:

• This is a fight that pits the principles of democratic self-governance against a very hard push towards a corporate-style plutocracy.
• The other side isn't talking about going back the 1950s, or the 1850s. They're trying to drag us back to the 1750s - when there was a landed gentry that held all the wealth, all the privilege, and all the power, and everybody else stayed put and took whatever the bosses dished out

If we're arguing the relative merits of raising the earnings cap to better fund Social Security, and we can both agree that jiggering the tax code is the way to go - or maybe making it more means-dependent or whatever - and we're just haggling over the details on how to get it done so people are better cared for, then we're good.

But if I'm up against somebody who insists on privatizing it and turning it over to Wall Street,

and he won't let go of his "tax-n-spend libruls are agents of the devil" bullshit,

and he seems not to care what happens to old people (hey, they shoulda planned better),

don't expect me to play nice with that fuckin' yahoo.

So there can be reconciliation, but not without acknowledgement that what MAGA has been trying to do is to follow Grover Norquist's prescription - to shrink the government (ie: whittle away at democracy) so it would eventually be small enough to drown it in the bathtub.

Putting it a slightly different way:

Telling me you regret voting for Trump is like

telling me you're sorry you fucked my dog.

I can be charitable enough to forgive,

and we can talk it through,

and we can move on.

But here's the thing:

You will always be that guy

who was going around

fuckin' people's dogs.